I was at the Sunday morning service at the Ch'an Meditation Center. The speaker
lectured on and on as we all sat cross-legged on cushions on the carpet. Individuals
to the left of me and to the right moved now and then, rearranging their legs,
making themselves comfortable. Because of my early Zen training, I sat all the
while erect and still, without moving a single muscle - deep in a peaceful meditation.
I wasn't inattentive to the talk but mainly paid close attention to my own mind.
Suddenly, it began to stir.
For that one instant, it was as if I were simultaneously inside and outside
time. From the spacious and unperturbed dimension of the meditation, I watched
closely as a vast complex came forward to claim me. Because I had been sitting
so still for almost an hour already, I was attentive enough to see myself begin
to fall into an identification with it. From within the complex, I realized
the speaker was really enjoying hearing himself talk and I felt concern he wasn't
about to wind down anytime soon and ring the bell. At the same time, I began
getting the first unpleasant sensations in my folded legs. From long experience,
I knew they were going to start aching unbearably. All this was familiar stuff
from my early years meditating and so I recognized the complex was "me."
It was me as I existed in time - my conditioned self.
The arising of this "self" and the identification with it happened
almost simultaneously - that's the conditioning. Being "me" was a
habit I had. Had I not been in such an attentive state, I wouldn't have noticed
I could equally well do without it.
But I did notice. That's all I did - nothing else. Immediately, I was free.
Like the two wings of a bird, the noticing and the freedom operated in unison.
The moment I saw I had begun to fall into an identification with "me,"
I was immediately free of "me."
I could see with such beautiful clarity that this "me" was not at
all central to who or what I was. It was central, though, to the onset of the
leg pain. To have let my consciousness be hijacked by it, I perceived in a flash,
would have been tantamount to delivering my peaceful meditation into an agonizing
bout of endurance. As it was, the pain was stopped dead in its tracks. It had
dropped away of its own accord. I sat on for a long time after this, free of
pain and immobile in peaceful meditation.
All this happened in the blink of an eye and, in that same blink, I realized
it was happening. The realization was like the drop of a pebble in a pond. Ripples
spread out in larger and larger circles. They vanished and the surface of the
pond was still again. I sat a long time meditating in that stillness. Eventually
the speaker did stop. It came as a surprise to me to hear the bell ring. It
was as if no time had gone by at all.
I hardly gave the whole thing a second thought. The next morning I almost didn't
write it down. It just chanced to spring to mind as I sat at my computer, as
I do first thing every morning, and began typing.

Leg pain in
sitting meditation is a mental attitude. The feeling "It's impossible.
I can't bear it." is an ego feeling. When there is no "I", there
is nothing to bear. In contrast, the more self-centered the sitting is, the
more painful.

Only as these
sentences started pouring down on the page, did it dawn on me: I had experienced
the great Buddhist truth: "The source of suffering is the illusion of a
separate self." It stunned me to have realized this myself - on my own.
It wasn't some big earth-shattering realization of enlightenment; only a plain
everyday observation of the obvious.
I became sensitive, after that experience, to the way the Sunday lectures kept
presenting the Buddha's realizations from the outside. Not a single lecture
ever gave a view of how it was to experience one of these truths for oneself.
In fact, the possibility that this could happen was never entertained. All the
lectures presented the Buddha's insights as if they were necessarily foreign
to any experience we ourselves could possibly have. The lectures called upon
us - not to experience these truths for ourselves, but to believe them and accept
them as truth. In other words, the Buddha's great and timeless realizations
had been turned into dogma and were being passed on to us as a belief system.
It seemed wrong to push the Buddha away from us like this and make him larger
than life. If the historical Buddha had thought he was special and unlike anyone
else, he wouldn't have gone around trying to share his realizations with others.
Rather he must have immediately recognized that what he'd experienced of his
own nature held true also for all sentient beings. Surely, he saw Buddhas everywhere.
The idea was to touch them and spark it to start happening on the inside of
those Buddhas like it had in him.
I began to see the Sunday lectures at the Ch'an Center twisted the kinds of
simple and profound clarifications I was beginning to have into something cosmically
grandiose and impossible for the ordinary mortal to achieve in this lifetime.
I got the feeling I was at the wrong end of a long historical progression that
had started out with plain insights that were real and immediate - the kind
of realizations that could possibly occur, even if only partially, to some stupid
jerk like me in a world like this - and transformed them into a package for
the consumption of the masses. Similarly, the big polluted river that snakes
its way like a mudflow through the coastal industrial city started out high
in the distant mountains as a pristine stream. When things come into the crowded
human world, this happens. They get corrupted.
We realize today what we've done to our rivers and oceans, skies and forests.
There are concerted efforts afoot to clean back up what we've sullied. Why not
do the same with the spiritual rivers that reach our shores as muddied with
popularizations and misrepresentations as our actual rivers are with filth and
poisons? If we are to find what is pristine and unpolluted in these traditions,
we must go back upstream - back to what is pure, what is real. "How?"
one might ask, "can we do this? We can't travel back in time!"
We can do it because the real river of Buddhism doesn't extend from the life
of the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago forward to our time. That's only the
river of institutions. That's a business of history and dogma, doctrine and
national churches. The real river, like always - just like it did in the time
of the Buddha himself, at the moment of his enlightenment - extends from the
unknown that's deep within us to our realization and experience and then onward
into the world in the form of our changed behavior, altered perceptions and
different concerns. This is the living river. It is pristine and unsullied so
long as we always draw from the source. The source is within us, not somewhere
back in history.
The institutions of Buddhism have done a great service to us by bringing us,
in as pure and unadulterated a form as possible, the actual fact of the Buddha's
enlightenment, as well as a rich array of methods and techniques. We owe them
so much!
Their failures are only the failures of institutions everywhere. Institutions
survive and accomplish their mission to the extent they can further themselves.
Over time they get corrupted so that this comes to be their main goal - to further
themselves. The justification, of course, is that to the extent they do this,
they further their mission - spread the dharma. What happens though is that,
as they come increasingly into the world, they have to come, like the river,
lower and lower. Repackaged again and again for more and more popular consumption,
the dharma gets diluted into dogma. The great truths of enlightenment are reduced
to popular religion. What is innate and unfolds from inside of us is pushed
onto some great god-like figure of the past whose legacy is tightly held in
the keep of the institution and its hierarchy in the form of a creed or orthodoxy
that is sacrosanct. These institutions develop, in other words, "institutional
egos" which take over and "unenlighten" them. This is what I
was beginning to see in the Sunday morning lectures at my beloved Ch'an Meditation
Center.
Increasingly I saw that the everyday and ordinary was more real to me than the
intellectual ideology of the long Sunday morning lectures. Meditation was beginning
to change my life in significant ways. For instance, I was simply walking down
the street one day when I espied a bent-over little black woman directly in
front of me. The sight of her labored walk suddenly overwhelmed me with a wave
of something completely new and different - the likes of which I'd never felt
before. "What is this?" I asked myself, curious and inquiring.
"Compassion," came the immediate answer, as if the Buddha himself
had whispered it softly into my ear. I felt compassion at that moment burst
forth full-blown, for the first time in my life. So pure, so different, so real
it was! To live a life without this: what a sad loss!
The subsequent Sunday, the lecturer at the Ch'an Meditation Center went on and
on about how we should "develop a mind of compassion." The lecture
did not accord with my own experience. The entreaty to force a compassionate
attitude, to impose it upon our experience - seemed phony to me now. I had seen
for myself the real thing doesn't need to be imposed from outside. It arises
spontaneously from within, in its own proper time.
Some months later, I was crossing town and came to a street corner. The brilliant
sunlight blazed in reflection on an old white stone building illuminating it
splendidly. "Thank you!" my heart cried out. "Oh, thank you so
much!" I stood there mesmerized and overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude.
This rush of feeling stopped me in my tracks. "Who am I thanking?"
I asked myself. It struck me odd and wonderful that I should be so grateful
for a simple sunlit building and that this gratitude should touch me so deep.
I knew immediately I was thanking life that it could be so beautiful, and that
it would expose its splendor so openly to me. I felt grateful to the historical
Buddha and his practice of meditation transmitted to me through so many generations
of teachers, for giving me the capacity again to be moved deeply and purely
by the simple everyday miracle of life on this planet. I felt grateful to the
Ch'an Meditation Center for everything that had started happening to me since
I began going there.
I was taken aback, though, on a subsequent Sunday at the Ch'an Center, when
the lecturer droned on and on about "engendering a mind of gratitude."
I sensed those seated around me were hanging on the speaker's every word. I
suddenly realized I didn't belong in these lectures. The notion of trying to
impose gratitude struck me as absurd and superficial. To consciously control
our behavior we have to split in two. One part tries to make the other be something
it's not. What can come from this? I thought of the episodes that were beginning
to happen to me day in and day out. The difference between what was real and
what was fake stood out so pronounced in my mind. Nothing forced or imposed
could be as sweet or beautiful as that which arises spontaneously because it
is intrinsic and its time has come.
Around this time I came down with the flu. One of the devotees at the meditation
center phoned to ask where I'd been. I told her I was sick in bed and at pains
to get a good night's rest. The next evening, after I had finally managed to
doze off into a deep healing sleep, the phone rang. It was this woman. I tactfully
informed her I had at long last managed to get to sleep and her call had woken
me. She explained she worked at a restaurant until 11 pm and could only call
me after she got off. The next night the same thing happened, and the next night
too. Finally I asked bluntly, "Why do you keep calling and waking me up
just when I get to sleep? I'm not going to get better if I can't sleep."
"Shi Fu teaches us it is part of the Buddhist practice to call people when
they are sick," she lectured, to correct my erroneous view.
"That's not real Buddhism," I blurted without thinking, "When
you're just blindly following what somebody tells you to do. You end up doing
the opposite of what's right."
I didn't get the feeling my comment was well-received. Next time I ran across
the woman, I could see she viewed me as some kind of renegade who dared to question
the teaching of the master and the meditation center's "party line."
I attended the Sunday lectures more and more infrequently. Instead, Sunday mornings
I started taking my meditation cushion over to the Hudson River and meditating
outdoors beside the river, under the open sky. It was a wasteland in those days
of wrecked piers and junk-strewn cobblestone. There was one little Ailanthus
tree struggling up out of a heap of rubble. But its green branches against the
sky beside the mighty river imparted a magic to the place for me. I could understand
why Herman Hesse's Siddhartha sat for so long beside his river. One day as I
was meditating there, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a figure running
and dodging. "Is it some dangerous or deranged derelict?" I wondered;
for I was in a very isolated area. There was no one around to call for help.
Nevertheless, I didn't look up or move a muscle but continued with my meditation.
A few moments later, with the movements of an agile youth running and jumping,
the figure came closer and entered my field of vision.
It was a tarpaulin, a square of canvas such as constructions workers used to
tie down over a pile of materials. It had gotten lose. The wind gave it life
and sent it dancing across the pavement. Momentarily, the brisk gust died down
and the tarpaulin collapsed on the ground like the empty thing it was. Then,
the wind blew up again and the "ghost" scampered energetically off
into the distance - looking every bit like a human figure on the run.
In the same way my mind made a person of that empty tarpaulin pushed around
by the wind, I suddenly saw I created an illusory "myself" from having
been blown this way and that through life by larger forces. I saw that the separate
and independent self I'd always thought I had was just a fabrication of my own
mind.
One of the next times I made it over to the Ch'an Meditation Center, the Sunday
morning lecturer talked on and on about how we must "drop the self."
Did he really imagine a realization of the illusory nature of the self could
be grafted on to our experience by lecturing at us? It seemed so obvious to
me it was an intrinsic and natural development that arose from the meditation
practice. To each it arrives in its due time, when the requisite conditions
are in place. And each person has the realization in his or her own unique way.
I work evenings and used to go out after work for pizza and beer to relax and
get sleepy. As I meditated more and more, I didn't need beer to relax. Besides,
I didn't want to wake up anymore with a headache in the morning and waste the
little bit of precious time I had for writing. I also realized I was spending
a lot of money I didn't need to spend - and I was getting fatter. One night
I was about to go out as usual for the beer and pizza and changed my mind. Instead,
I sliced up an apple and had it with peanut butter as I prepared a hot cup of
chamomile tea. Then I nestled in bed with the tea reading an interesting book.
I came upon some profound passage that catapulted me right to sleep and into
the most interesting dream. Next morning, my writing was deeper, more rewarding.
This whole thing happened spontaneously, again and again. In the end, I stopped
going out for beer and pizza altogether. "How much richer," I marveled,
"to stop drinking this way than to just do it because I was told to obey
some outside 'precept'!" I began to feel the lectures on precepts at the
Ch'an Center had gotten it backwards. My resolve not to drink didn't come from
making a vow but arose spontaneously from within as part of the gradual and
organic unfolding of my intrinsic nature. It seemed obvious to me the precepts
presented a picture of those traits which arose like this of their own accord
in a mind purifying itself. They were not rules to be followed but a depiction
of what actually happened to one naturally as a result of meditation. Looked
at this way, the vows to maintain these precepts took on new meaning for me.
I saw them as promises not to betray my own true nature. Many a time I slipped
up and many a time the vows came to my assistance. And so even the vows themselves
came into play on their own. I never imposed them on myself as the lecturer
instructed.
That which comes from within like this is its own reward. No mention is made
of this in the lectures at the meditation center. Instead there is much talk
of "building up merit." I don't need to think of "building up
merit." I'm not interested in amassing a bank account for some future lifetime.
Doing the right thing is scintillating and enlivening in its immediate and beautiful
effect. The lectures instruct us that we should transfer our merit to others.
I don't need to "transfer the merit" to other people. The moment I
do something right, everyone around me benefits from the enhancement of life
in me. Just by being real I do more good than I could ever possibly do by trying.
That bent over little black woman on the street - she gave me to feel compassion.
She didn't do it by a long lecture but just by being herself. I wonder how many
other people she liberated. I doubt she'd ever heard the word "Buddhism."
This is the way it works. This is the way it's real to me now. I stopped going
to the Sunday lectures altogether.
I'm guessing it all started out right many hundreds of years ago and that the
original Ch'an Buddhist teachers in ancient China didn't harangue their disciples
about what they should do but instead gave them a beautiful picture of what
happens in the enlightenment process. Instead of foisting upon them doctrinal
objectives to be imposed on their behavior, I'm supposing these masters of old
shared with their students a realization of the kinds of things which unfold
naturally in them as they make their way along this path of inner development.
As Ch'an Buddhism became acceptable to the intellectual establishment of those
times and eventually to the power elite, money started pouring in for bigger
and bigger temples and monastic centers. We can see the same happening in American
today. And so we can supposed that, like it is doing today in America, in ancient
China Ch'an Buddhism got off track somewhere along the way. What was real started
getting turned into a church. What was wisdom became preaching.
I feel "taught Buddhism" sadly misses the essence and substitutes
something fake for what is real. What everybody is sitting at the Ch'an Center
Sunday mornings striving so hard to glean from the lectures are subtle and evanescent
states of mind they themselves have certainly experienced on many occasions
without even realizing it. They don't have to learn how to get enlightened.
They only have to pause and grow still enough in meditation to notice what's
already there inside them - that beautiful symphony drowned out by the din of
noisy conditioned ways. The truth plays in their bones. It dances in their gut.
It runs in their blood. Meditation brings them to the river where they are part
of the same flow as everything around. Without words, it teaches. By drowning
out what's lesser, which can't sustain itself in silence, it takes hold - until
which point it bursts out like flowers in their path. Wherever they walk, it
blooms and they gain that exquisite delight of being inside the miracle. When
it happens it is so simple, so immediate, and so direct. It doesn't seem like
a big thing! It's just rudimentary, basic, fundamental, ordinary. Above all,
it's practical! It works: that day when I had the realization about suffering
and self, my legs were understandably sore when I unfolded them at the end of
the two-hour lecture and stood up, but while I was sitting I was not in pain.
Buddhism, in my experience, is a creative endeavor. It has to do with the discovery
of reality. To discover reality I have to re-invent myself in such a way that
I am true. Being true, I can see truth. Thus when my core is enlightened, even
a little bit, my ego goes dancing in its wind, like the tarpaulin down by the
river. The innate joy of this dance from the authentic beauty within is so powerful
and so real, and so much more compelling than anything else the world has to
offer, that my ego doesn't need outside incentive. It desires with its whole
little deluded heart to make itself transparent in every way to that which occasionally
shines through it. Like a stained glass window, it delights when the light blazes
through, making its true colors show - because this is when it's most truly
itself: when it lets the light through. It wants not itself, but that which
comes through to do the magic. It vanishes before this with savor and with relish.
Not because it was counter-conditioned by some imposed religious belief system,
but because it has come to taste the delight of a sensuous abandon to the unconditioned,
and the unconditional. Freedom is its own reward!
It seemed to me that to try to "learn" Buddhism in the way a student
learns engineering or dentistry involves displacing the source of what is real
onto the institution and its hierarchy. It's not my experience that Buddhism
is primarily a matter of intellectual endeavor. My friend Nancy Joyce and I
formed a Saturday meditation group - free and open to anybody. The Ch'an Center
graciously allowed us the use of its second floor meditation hall and now schedules
us in almost every Saturday. Over the years that our Saturday group has been
in existence, I have witnessed a remarkable transformation in those who attend
on a regular basis for the all-day sittings. Nancy says she can see the same
transformation in me and I can definitely see it in her. I feel that in our
own small but significant way we have played a role in the reclamation of Buddhism's
purest stream - we who know nothing and are just ordinary people. Buddhism's
highest power is when it becomes small and everyday and enters into the trickle
of life.
For me, Buddhism is about my deepest and most innate nature. It isn't in the
keep of the Ch'an Meditation Center or any other institution or belief system.
The enlightened master doesn't have it. Buddha himself didn't have it. There's
no place to go and get it because it's not some place else. It never left me.
It's right inside what I am. I have only to go there deeply to find it. Meditation
provides the conditions for it to emerge in the spontaneous and creative way
that's most real.
The legalistic following of rules is too surfacy, too superficial - ultimately
it's fake. A much more profoundly rooted code of behavior and action arises
naturally from the direct realizations that come while seated quietly in deep
stillness. This code refines itself progressively as the realization deepens
with further meditative practice. Daily life increasingly comes into focus as
a primary form of practice.
To sit in quiet meditation. To notice the most self-evident truths. To delight
in the spontaneous change in everyday behavior. To live more and more of life
out of truth because such living is so much more deeply rewarding and beneficial.
This is a Buddhism that for me is real.
There is a joy in reading and studying and attending informative lectures. The
language of Buddhism is a delight - a poetry that speaks the deepest truths
about being. The heart's most profound currents are reflected in the texts and
commentaries of the great and accomplished masters. None of this need have anything
to do with indoctrination into a creed or climbing up through an institutional
hierarchy.
Buddhism, for me, is not about climbing up and getting big but going down -
opening progressively down to a deeper level of existence. Becoming small. If
anything, it entails shedding belief systems, layer by layer, that have nothing
whatsoever to do with reality.
On his deathbed, the Buddha summed it all up nicely. He didn't say anything
about imposing rules and codes of behavior on oneself or buying into belief
systems. He simply admonished his disciples to be true. His dying words: "Be
a light unto yourselves." To my mind, after some 2,500 years, this is still
the last word on learning Buddhism.

Dr. William R.
Stimson is the founder and former editor of the Dream Network Journal and led
dream groups in Manhattan. For years he conducted the free all-day meditation
every Saturday at the Ch'an Center in Elmhurst, Queens. His writing has appeared
in numerous journals and magazines and can be found at www.my-hope.com/Bill.
He has recently moved to Taiwan with his wife and is devoting himself to writing.